University of Chicago fits to a 3.25 mean, 50% above, 50 % below, not matter your effort, you are graded compared to your peer group. You could have a 92 final grade and if the mean is 95 you get a B-. That's what top schools do.

Is chicago really halved at 3.25 GPA? I know there are some majors where the classes always average the mean to that area but I would question that as an overall policy (especially for somewhere that doesn't release rankings). Also wouldn't that give honors to half the class which seems kind of ridiculous for an undergrad institution?

IIRC, majors like physics grant honors in their concentration at a 3.0 and god knows what the premed kids go through.

If your school really is giving honors to half its graduates then it is probably not super important to put it on your resume (and if your GPA is high enough to warrant honors you should probably be putting on your GPA to speak for itself). The higher honors however, go ahead and put them on there--you always see them in the biographic paragraphs on the old guys in your textbooks so why not sell yourself with it.

Did you do Rhodes or Albright or did you read postgrad education at Oxford?

QUOTE=JLibourel;1582642]I always put on my resume that my B.A. from UCLA was granted with "Highest Honors." It kind of surprised me, as my GPA wasn't super-great, about a 3.6 (lotta B's in my first two years). I always suspected it may have been for taking tough courses like Sanskrit and getting into Oxford. However, I was honest on my resumes and always said that I only got a Second at Oxford.

[/quote]

No, I was not a Rhodes Scholar, nor did I have a Fulbright, which is what I think you mean. I was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (for college professors in training), which was unusual, as they were seldom awarded for study outside the USA. I studied at Oxford as a "Senior Student," i.e., as an undergraduate reading for a second B.A. (which in the curious Oxbridge way of things allowed me to buy an M.A. from Oxford some years later.

An amusing sidelight is that one of the guys chosen over me by the Rhodes selectors was up at Balliol with me. You could understand how he was chosen. Upon meeting him you would think, "How dynamic, how well informed!" After knowing him a week, you'd realize he wasn't so much dynamic as simply a loudmouth, and he seemed well informed because he was a monomaniac on politics and current events. Eventually he was disliked by all--Americans and British alike. At that point, he invited a columnist from one of the British evening newspapers up and wined dined her. She thereupon actually wrote a gushy article about him entitled, "I find a future president of the U.S. (I think) at Oxford." We all wanted to barf! Well, he didn't become president but he did go on to teach at a certain northeastern university (not one of the Ivy League). I later heard that at mid-life he had ditched his wife and run off with the Filipino house boy! Not long ago, there was an op-ed piece by him in the paper. It stated he was now an emeritus professor and lived in Manila and Bali. "Rice Queen!" thought I.

No, I was not a Rhodes Scholar, nor did I have a Fulbright, which is what I think you mean. I was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (for college professors in training), which was unusual, as they were seldom awarded for study outside the USA. I studied at Oxford as a "Senior Student," i.e., as an undergraduate reading for a second B.A. (which in the curious Oxbridge way of things allowed me to buy an M.A. from Oxford some years later.

An amusing sidelight is that one of the guys chosen over me by the Rhodes selectors was up at Balliol with me. You could understand how he was chosen. Upon meeting him you would think, "How dynamic, how well informed!" After knowing him a week, you'd realize he wasn't so much dynamic as simply a loudmouth, and he seemed well informed because he was a monomaniac on politics and current events. Eventually he was disliked by all--Americans and British alike. At that point, he invited a columnist from one of the British evening newspapers up and wined dined her. She thereupon actually wrote a gushy article about him entitled, "I find a future president of the U.S. (I think) at Oxford." We all wanted to barf! Well, he didn't become president but he did go on to teach at a certain northeastern university (not one of the Ivy League). I later heard that at mid-life he had ditched his wife and run off with the Filipino house boy! Not long ago, there was an op-ed piece by him in the paper. It stated he was now an emeritus professor and lived in Manila and Bali. "Rice Queen!" thought I.[/quote]

No, I was not a Rhodes Scholar, nor did I have a Fulbright, which is what I think you mean. I was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (for college professors in training), which was unusual, as they were seldom awarded for study outside the USA. I studied at Oxford as a "Senior Student," i.e., as an undergraduate reading for a second B.A. (which in the curious Oxbridge way of things allowed me to buy an M.A. from Oxford some years later.

An amusing sidelight is that one of the guys chosen over me by the Rhodes selectors was up at Balliol with me. You could understand how he was chosen. Upon meeting him you would think, "How dynamic, how well informed!" After knowing him a week, you'd realize he wasn't so much dynamic as simply a loudmouth, and he seemed well informed because he was a monomaniac on politics and current events. Eventually he was disliked by all--Americans and British alike. At that point, he invited a columnist from one of the British evening newspapers up and wined dined her. She thereupon actually wrote a gushy article about him entitled, "I find a future president of the U.S. (I think) at Oxford." We all wanted to barf! Well, he didn't become president but he did go on to teach at a certain northeastern university (not one of the Ivy League). I later heard that at mid-life he had ditched his wife and run off with the Filipino house boy! Not long ago, there was an op-ed piece by him in the paper. It stated he was now an emeritus professor and lived in Manila and Bali. "Rice Queen!" thought I.